Pentagon: Leave 10k troops in Afghanistan or remove them all

The Pentagon has reportedly offered the White House an ultimatum with regards to the future of the military’s involvement in Afghanistan: Either leave 10,000 troops behind past the previously declared 2014 deadline or remove them altogether.

United States President Barack Obama has been adamant since early
during his first term in office that he’d end the war in
Afghanistan on his watch. With some 37,500 troops still there,
however, and only 11 months until it’s time to leave, his
administration’s military leaders now say the president must
pursue one of two choices.

The
Wall Street Journal was the first outlet to report late
Tuesday that officials at the US Department of Defense have
offered Mr. Obama a pair of options. The president would have to
either agree to keep 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan past that
Dec. 31, 2014 deadline as a security precaution, or else ensure
that all service members are sent home before the years’ end, the
paper reported.

“The proposal is 10,000 or basically nothing, a
pullout,” one official who was briefed on the plan added to
a report published that same day by the
New York Times.

According to that paper, officials agree that leaving less than
10,000 troops after the 2014 deadline would not allow for the
trove of diplomatic, military and intelligence officials expected
to stay indefinitely beyond the end of the year to be properly
protected.

“The president has not yet made decisions about final troop
numbers,” National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin
Hayden told the Times. Ultimately that decision will involve some
input from Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, though, who so far
has been mostly silently on proposed bilateral security
agreements between nations.

If an agreement isn’t reached, Hayden said, “then we will
initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be
no U.S. or NATO troop presence in Afghanistan.”

“That is not a future we are seeking, and we do not believe
that it is in Afghanistan’s interests,” Hayden added in a
statement also sent to the Journal. “The further this slips
into 2014, however, the more likely such an outcome is.”

Another outcome that is likely to spur commotion would involve
the expedited removal of the remaining tens of thousands of US
troops in Afghanistan. If Pres. Obama isn’t satisfied with the
10,000 troop figure, the Journal reported, and then he’d have to
purge his army from the country entirely during the next 11
months.

So far, though, that option seems the less likely of the two. The
Journal reported that the 10,000-troop proposal has found support
among members of both the US intelligence community and the
Department of State, who fear their operations would suffer
should the White House decide to send military personnel back
home immediately.

"To have an intelligence network, you have to have a
footprint, and to have a footprint, you have to have force
protection,” one senior official told that paper.

"The intelligence community has a vested interest and they've
been making a strong case privately for a military presence so
they can continue to do their job," added another on
condition of anonymity. "They see Afghanistan as a place they
need to have eyes on."

Another 5,000 US troops are expected to be sent home next month
regardless of what option the president opts for, but a surge of
more could soon follow if he isn’t satisfied with the 10,000
tally offered by the Pentagon. Those troops would all be expected
to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2015 when Mr. Obama’s second
presidential administration comes to a close.